Make sure the host meets the minimum hardware configurations supported by ESXi6.7.
Hardware and System Resources
To install or upgrade ESXi, your hardware and system resources must meet the following requirements:
- Supported server platform. For a list of supported platforms, see the VMware Compatibility Guide at http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility.
- ESXi 6.7 requires a host machine with at least two CPU cores.
- ESXi 6.7 supports 64-bit x86 processors released after September 2006. This includes a broad range of multi-core processors. For a complete list of supported processors, see the VMware compatibility guide at http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility.
- ESXi 6.7 requires the NX/XD bit to be enabled for the CPU in the BIOS.
- ESXi 6.7 requires a minimum of 4 GB of physical RAM. It is recommended to provide at least 8 GB of RAM to run virtual machines in typical production environments.
- To support 64-bit virtual machines, support for hardware virtualization (Intel VT-x or AMD RVI) must be enabled on x64 CPUs.
- One or more Gigabit or faster Ethernet controllers. For a list of supported network adapter models, see the VMware Compatibility Guide at http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility.
- SCSI disk or a local, non-network, RAID LUN with unpartitioned space for the virtual machines.
- For Serial ATA (SATA), a disk connected through supported SAS controllers or supported on-board SATA controllers. SATA disks are considered remote, not local. These disks are not used as a scratch partition by default because they are seen as remote.
Note: You cannot connect a SATA CD-ROM device to a virtual machine on an ESXi 6.7 host. To use the SATA CD-ROM device, you must use IDE emulation mode.
Storage Systems
For a list of supported storage systems, see the VMware Compatibility Guide at http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility. For Software Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), see Installing and Booting ESXi with Software FCoE.
ESXi Booting Requirements
vSphere 6.7 supports booting ESXi hosts from the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). With UEFI, you can boot systems from hard drives, CD-ROM drives, or USB media.
Starting with vSphere 6.7, VMware Auto Deploy supports network booting and provisioning of ESXi hosts with UEFI.
ESXi can boot from a disk larger than 2 TB if the system firmware and the firmware on any add-in card that you are using support it. See the vendor documentation.
Storage Requirements for ESXi 6.7 Installation or Upgrade
Installing ESXi 6.7 or upgrading to ESXi 6.7 requires a boot device that is a minimum of 1 GB. Non-USB boot devices require 5.2-GB disk space to create an on-disk filesystem partition layout including the VMFS and scratch volumes. If a smaller disk or LUN is used, the installer attempts to allocate a scratch region on a separate local disk. If a local disk cannot be found, for example storage such as SAN or iSCSI LUN, which are considered remote, the /scratch directory is on the ESXi host ramdisk, linked to /tmp/scratch. You can reconfigure /scratch to use a separate disk or LUN. For best performance and memory optimization, do not leave /scratch on the ESXi host ramdisk but create an on-disk VFAT scratch partition.
To reconfigure /scratch, see the topic "Set the Scratch Partition from the vSphere Web Client" in the vCenter Server Installation and Setup documentation.
Due to the I/O sensitivity of USB and SD devices, the installer does not create a scratch partition on these devices. When installing or upgrading on USB or SD devices, the installer attempts to allocate a scratch region on an available local disk or datastore. If no local disk or datastore is found, /scratch is placed on the ramdisk. After the installation or upgrade, you should reconfigure /scratch to use a persistent datastore. Although a 1GB USB or SD device suffices for a minimal installation, you should use a 4GB or larger device. The extra space is used for an expanded coredump partition on the USB/SD device. Use a high-quality USB flash drive of 16 GB or larger so that the extra flash cells can prolong the life of the boot media, but high-quality drives of 4 GB or larger are sufficient to hold the extended coredump partition. See Knowledge Base article http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2004784.
In Auto Deploy installations, the installer attempts to allocate a scratch region on an available local disk or datastore. If no local disk or datastore is found, /scratch is placed on ramdisk. You should reconfigure /scratch to use a persistent datastore following the installation.
For environments that boot from a SAN or use Auto Deploy, you need not allocate a separate LUN for /scratch for each ESXi host. You can co-locate the scratch regions for many ESXi hosts onto a single LUN. The number of hosts assigned to any single LUN should be weighed against the LUN size and the I/O behavior of the virtual machines.
